Preserving History and Confronting Armenian Genocide Denial

About This Lesson

In the previous lesson, students explored dilemmas of justice and accountability after the Armenian Genocide, focusing primarily on perpetrators. In this lesson, students will learn about the Turkish government’s ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide and consider the impact of denial on the descendents of the genocide’s victims and survivors. Students will complete their study of this history by learning about the efforts of some of these descendents to protect the history of the Armenian Genocide and keep its memory alive in people’s hearts and minds through public art installations.

Essential Questions

• What choices and conditions led to the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire during World War I?
• How can learning about these choices and conditions help us protect the most vulnerable groups in our society today?

Guiding Questions

• Why does Türkiye deny the Armenian Genocide and attempt to convice the world that it did not happen?
• What are the consequences of denial of the Armenian Genocide?
• Why is it important to preserve the memory of the Armenian Genocide?

Learning Objectives

• Students will be able to identify several factors that might motivate countries and individuals to deny the occurrence of genocide.
• Students will reflect on the role of public art to commemorate historical incidents of genocide and educate the public about their impact.

See the Additional Context & Background section in the Google Doc version of this lesson plan for the essential historical knowledge needed to teach this lesson.

Lesson Plan

Day 1

Activity 1: Reflect on the Personal Impact of Denial

Ask students to privately journal a response to the following prompts. Explain to them that they will not be asked to share their response to the first question with the class:

• Think of a time when someone wronged you and denied it. How did you feel?
• What do you think might motivate someone to deny that they have wronged another person?
• How does that denial impact the person who has been wronged?

Once students have had a few minutes to respond, use Think-Pair-Share to briefly discuss their ideas about the second and third questions. Since students may be hesitant to share about their personal experiences of being wronged, we recommend that you avoid asking them to share their responses to the first prompt.

Activity 2: Learn about Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Explain to students that within a few years of the end of World War I, a new Turkish nationalist movement gained strength and established the Republic of Türkiye in 1923. The new government, led by Mustafa Kemal (who became known as Atatürk), denied that the Young Turk government had attempted to annihilate the Armenians, as a group, from the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916. After Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide in the early 1940s, and the United Nations ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, the government denied that what happened to the Armenians was a genocide. The Turkish government continues to deny the Armenian Genocide today.

You might share the text of the U.N. Genocide Convention with the class, or at least review the following simple definition, based on the Convention:

genocide – any act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group

Then distribute the handout Viewing Guide: Confronting Armenian Genocide Denial and play the clip from The Armenian Genocide (37:20–45:00), which explores some of the causes and consequences of the Turkish government’s policy of official denial of the genocide. The handout contains a transcript of the video and four discussion questions. Preview the questions with students so that they can use them as a guide to annotating the transcript and taking notes as they watch:

1. When the Republic of Türkiye was established in 1923, why did it feel important to its leaders to distance themselves from the Young Turks and deny that they attempted to annihilate the Armenians? (38:00)
2. What factors motivate the government of Türkiye to continue to deny today that what happened to Armenians in 1915–1916 was genocide? (41:18)
3. What factors motivate many Turkish people to to deny the genocide? (41:50)
4. Why do you think it matters whether what happened to Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916 fits that definition? (44:25)

After watching the video, ask volunteers to share their responses to the discussion questions and clarify any misunderstandings with students. You might also ask students to draw connections between their thinking in response to the journal prompts at the beginning of class and their responses to these questions.

Activity 3: Discuss the Consequences of Genocide Denial

The class will use the Pick a Number strategy to discuss three quotations about the impact and consequences of genocide denial. Before the activity begins, identify three locations in the classroom for students to gather, one for each of the quotations on the handout, The Consequences of Genocide Denial Quotations.

Begin the activity by distributing the handout and giving students a few minutes to read the three quotations on the second page. Each student should choose one of the three quotations and use it to begin to respond to the four prompts on the handout as best they can. They will have the opportunity to discuss the prompts in more depth with classmates in a moment, so it is okay if they are only able to record their initial thinking now. If the quotation they chose does not address a prompt directly, they should respond based on their own ideas, experiences, and intuitions. The prompts are as follows:

1. Summarize the quotation in your own words.
2. How does the denial of genocide impact the victims and their descendents?
3. How does the denial of genocide impact the society in which it occurred?
4. How does the denial of a genocide impact humanity as a whole?

Now, have students stand up and move to the appropriate location in the classroom for their chosen quotation. They should take their handouts with them. Once they have gathered in the three locations, they will likely need to divide into smaller groups so that the discussion is manageable; groups no larger than 3–4 students are preferable.

Once students have identified their discussion partners, they will share and discuss their responses to the questions on the handout.

Debrief students’ discussions as a whole group by asking for volunteers to share out highlights from their groups’ responses to the four prompts. Then, ask students to comment on ideas and perspectives from other groups that felt relevant to their group’s discussion. What similarities and differences did they notice between the various discussions that occurred?

Day 2

Activity 1: Discuss What Happened to Armenians After the Genocide

In this day’s activities, students will learn about the efforts of Armenians today to preserve the history of the Armenian Genocide and combat denial. Before doing so, it is important to help students understand what happened to survivors after the end of the genocide and where Armenians live in the world today.

Armenians After the Genocide provides a summary of the variety of outcomes that survivors experienced. The handout also briefly explains the establishment of the Republic of Türkiye and the Republic of Armenia (which then became part of the Soviet Union until 1991) in the years following World War I. Share the reading Armenians After the Genocide with the class either by reading it aloud or using it to plan a brief mini-lecture before moving on to the activities that follow.

Activity 2: Discuss the Role of Art as a Force Against Denial and Forgetting

Explain to the class that because Türkiye, a powerful country in Europe and the Middle East, has denied the Armenian Genocide, many other countries were hesitant to acknowledge the genocide for decades. Uruguay was the first in the 1960s. By the 1990s, several European countries and Canada had officially acknowledged it. Germany followed in 2016. The United States, an ally of Türkiye, did not officially acknowledge the genocide until 2019 (by Congress) and 2021 (by President Joe Biden). Therefore, the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and their descendents have experienced more than a century of widespread denial of the harm done to them in 1915 and 1916. ¹ The class will now look at the efforts of some Armenian Americans to make sure that this history is not ignored.

Distribute and read aloud the reading Confronting Denial of the Armenian Genocide through Art, which discusses how Los Angeles–area artists have used their art to foster public awareness of the Armenian Genocide, in direct contradiction of the Turkish government’s official policy of denial.

Then, in small groups or as a class, discuss the following questions:

• The creator of the Los Angeles murals, Arutyun Gozukuchikyan, describes his role as “documenting” and “painting history.” How can art provide a window into the history of the Armenian Genocide that traditional historical accounts cannot?
• How does the Turkish government’s official policy of denial shape how these artists view the purpose and urgency of their art?
• How can commemorating the Armenian Genocide through art function as a form of protest and civic participation?
• What other strategies and methods can you think of for confronting the denial of the Armenian Genocide and educating the public about this history?

Activity 3: Visualize a Mural for Your Community 

Finish the lesson by asking students to respond to the following prompts in their journals.

• If you were designing a mural that educates your community about the Armenian Genocide, what designs or illustrations might you choose?
• Where would you place the mural, and why?
• Would your mural serve as a memorial to the victims and survivors of the genocide, a tool to educate community members and spark important conversations, or both? Explain your thinking.

Time permitting, give students the opportunity to share their ideas with one or more classmates.

• 1Roger W. Smith, Erik Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton, "Professional Ethics and The Denial of The Armenian Genocide," Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1995.